


Second String

by yrfrndfrnkly



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Banter, Enemies to Lovers, F/F, First Date, First Kiss, Getting Together, Ginny’s in a rut, Herbal tea, Holyhead Harpies, Ministry employee!Pansy, Neville Longbottom is a Good Friend, Pasties, Quidditch Player!Ginny, Sports Talk, Teetotaling, Thoughts of Self-Doubt, a dash of self-actualised!Hermione, a soupçon of Harry and Ron, badass women playing Quidditch, extremely background Harry/Ron, family time at the Burrow, first date at the Burrow, journalist!Neville, light banter about wanking, music of the early 2000s, occasional reflections on Ginny’s past relationship with Harry, pub fight, soft butch energy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-09
Updated: 2019-11-09
Packaged: 2021-01-26 06:00:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 18,886
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21369310
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yrfrndfrnkly/pseuds/yrfrndfrnkly
Summary: Ginny's totally committed to her spot on the Holyhead Harpies, but as a reserve player, she's been riding the bench for a year. All work and no play, she's in a hell of a rut, until a hex goes astray and Pansy Parkinson shows up.
Relationships: Pansy Parkinson/Ginny Weasley
Comments: 49
Kudos: 67
Collections: Femslash Exchange 2019





	1. The Bench

**Author's Note:**

  * For [maraudersaffair](https://archiveofourown.org/users/maraudersaffair/gifts).

> Dear maraudersaffair,
> 
> Here it is--your Ginsy gift from me! I really hope you like it! Your Quidditch and Slytherins at the Burrow likes wouldn't get out of my head, so I built this story around them. I doubt it's the Quidditch story you had in mind, but it's the one the muse gave me, so I really hope you enjoy it. <3 <3 <3
> 
> Supermassive thanks to my beta-wonder and cheer-reader extraordinaire (credit by name after reveals).

> _**Falcons Spot Prey**  
by Neville Longbottom_
> 
> _Ginny Weasley, reserve Chaser and Seeker for the Holyhead Harpies, has been riding the bench at the Holyhead pitch for over a year. Fans who’ve followed Weasley’s career can’t help asking why. The war hero (Weasley holds an Order of Merlin, 2nd Class) was scouted by the Bath Buns out of Hogwarts and helped them to their first title in the second-tier league in almost a decade. With this kind of buzz, rumours flew about Weasley’s offers from other second-tier teams with more prestigious recent records. Weasley remained a bun in the oven at Bath, and rumours of the unprecedented signing bonus offered by the Devon Creams were never confirmed. Last June, in what Muggleborn sports fans have dubbed the Silly Season (a reference to motor car racing, my friends assure me), rumours cropped up about Weasley again. Though she remained tight lipped, September 2001 saw her smiling and shaking hands with Hermia Hopper, Holyhead’s general manager. In the intervening year, Holyhead have given Weasley little to smile about; she hasn’t played in a Premier League game yet, despite persistent rumours that a number of teams including the Falmouth Falcons have made offers to trade for her, eager to get Weasley in play. _
> 
> _When it comes to the question of why Weasley’s been kept on the bench, Hopper has been as elusive as she has about the rumours that other Premier teams have offered to trade for Weasley. Weasley’s abilities—her daredevil flying and trademark precision with the Quaffle—are not to be sneezed at. Need a hanky, Hopper? _
> 
> _“We haven’t had a front end this strong in years,” Hopper stated last week, dodging the issue once more. “Weasley is a strong, team player. At this time she best serves the team by putting her laudable work ethic towards honing her craft and staying game ready should one of our starting Chasers—Circe forbid—get injured.”_
> 
> _Laudable work ethic indeed. Since Weasley took up her reserve position, her constant presence at the Harpies’ hunting ground has been noted by teammates and fans alike. _
> 
> _“She’s rock solid,” stated Gwenog Jones, Holyhead’s captain, Beater and the most decorated player in franchise history. “She never misses a practice, never a game. We fly in rain or shine, and our reserve players are right there with us in solidarity. It’s not about waiting for someone to take ill or have an accident. It’s about camaraderie and commitment. She’s always there to cheer us on.” _
> 
> _When pressed for a comment on when Holyhead might have a chance to cheer Weasley on, Jones offered no comment. This is also Weasley’s standard line. When this reporter recently asked Weasley whether she’ll consider the offers awaiting her when she’s once again a free agent, she told him to 'eff off and get her another Italian soda._

*

“Neville Longbottom, what is this?!” Ginny barks through the open Floo. She can’t see Neville anywhere, only the general detritus that evidences his search for a flatmate continues to yield no fruit. “Neville!” Ginny calls again, when Neville doesn’t prove forthcoming. Silence. “NEVILLE! YOU CAN’T HIDE!” Ginny pulls her head out of the hearth and gives it a shake, loosening soot from her ponytail. Ginny places _The Quibbler_ under one arm before bouncing up from her kneel, snatching the pot of Floo powder from the mantlepiece, sloppily grabbing a pinch, and tossing it into the flames. “The Love Shack!” she commands almost before she’s planted both feet on the hearthstones.

With the steadiness of someone who’s been travelling by fireplace her whole life, Ginny bounds out of Neville’s hearth the instant she’s reached her destination. “READY OR NOT MOTHERFUCKER!” she bellows into the seemingly empty flat. “HERE I COME. AND I DON’T CARE IF I CATCH YOU WANKING AGAIN!.”

Crossing the unoccupied sitting room, Ginny hip checks her way through the double-hinged door to Neville’s kitchen and finds it, too, void of human presence. She could cast _Hominem Revelio_, but then Neville, wherever he’s hiding, would feel it and be forewarned she’s on his tail. The Muggle way takes longer, but one doesn’t grow up in a house with Fred and George without developing an aptitude for finding hidden things. A memory flits, unbidden, to Ginny’s mind—seeking out the twins in the back yard when they were all so small—and she winces. They’d always had a hell of a cheek; their favourite tactic had been letting one of themselves get caught and joining Ginny in the hunt for the other until her gaze was averted and they could find another hiding spot. They’d always pretend to be one another, making a show of how well-hidden Fred or George was today; but Ginny’d always known they were bluffing, taking it in turns to get caught and hide until they were caught again. She can’t remember a time when she couldn’t tell them apart. Now of course, their most classic party trick—the old switcheroo—is played no more. Ginny feels her face pull into a grimace as she starts down the hallway towards the bathroom, and shakes her head, as though to banish the memory. She can hear the sound of pipes rushing. The coward.

“Neville!” Ginny shouts, banging on the bathroom door with a fist. “You’ve got ten seconds to towel up before I come in!”

Ginny counts to seven in her head, but the sound of the water continues. She spells the door open, busts into the room (not even fully steamed up yet) and yanks the shower curtain back.

“Oh, hello Ginny,” Neville says innocently. “I’m just in the shower right now, as you can see, so—“

“You can’t hide in the shower. We’ve learned this lesson together before, if you recall.”

“Might you be referring to the time you barged into my home, unannounced, while I was wanking? Because you can change my Floo address back any day now. Love Shack… come on.” Neville trails off in a mutter.

Ginny chooses to ignore this tangent. “What do you call this?!” she demands instead, brandishing Neville’s article, cutting to the chase and taking no heed of his naked, slippery body.

“Incisive Quidditch commentary.”

“I see.” Ginny glares at him. 

Neville’s nonchalant bravado slips and he sighs lightly. He leans forward and turns off the tap. “I’ll get dressed and meet you in the kitchen. Boil a kettle, will you?”

*

Ginny’s pouring herbal tea for herself into the largest of Neville’s mugs and a black tea for him into a dainty China cup when Neville walks into the kitchen, hitching up his trousers.

Neville sniffs the air. “I don’t even have mint.”

“I Transfigured it.” 

“Transfiguring Yorkshire Gold is a travesty.”

“Drink and let drink.” Ginny pushes the cup towards him and carries her own mug over to Neville’s small, four-chair table.

“We’re not all professional Quidditch players,” Neville scolds. “Some of us don’t care about the effects of caffeine.”

Ginny blows on her tea and takes a piping hot sip. “We’re none of us professional Quidditch players at this table,” she grumbles. Her anger at Neville is seeping away, as though her hot mug is leeching it out through the skin of her hands. It’s not his fault.

“You know that’s what you’re really grumpy about, right?” Neville asks. “Or do we need to do the thing where I ask you leading questions about your feelings until we get to the point where you recognise that _I_ am your loving, supportive BFF and the Harpies are squandering your talent?”

“Ugh.” Ginny sets down her mug and drops her forehead onto Neville’s table. “I know,” she says, voice muffled by the wood.

“Good.”

“But you still should have told me you were going to run something! Why’d you have to shock me like that? And how’d you get Luna to run a Quidditch article, anyway?”

Neville shrugs. Ginny can’t see him. All she can see is woodgrain. But she’s known Neville for a decade and has been his best friend for four years: she can tell when he’s shrugging. Ginny sits up again, and Neville gives her a look. “Rejoining us, are we?”

“Don’t use the royal we when I’m world weary. And answer the question.” There’s no bite to Ginny’s remark, just the twin desires to avoid talking about her Nowheresville career and to know when _The Quibbler_ added Quidditch reportage to its repertoire.

“Because she loves you and agrees with me that your talent is being wasted by the Harpies.”

“And?” Ginny probes.

“And I think she suspects the Premier League may be involved in some kind of conspiracy involving longevity spells and human testing.”

“Theeere it is,” Ginny draws our the ‘e’ and chuckles.

Neville shrugs again. They sip their teas in friendly silence for a minute.

“So,” Neville begins, “have you considered the Wasps’ offer at all? And please feel free to congratulate me on making up the Falcons’ rumour as a smoke screen.”

Ginny takes another sip of her tea to avoid answering in the negative. She doesn’t need a lecture on how the Harpies—her dream team since before she could fly a broom—don’t deserve her.

“Ginny!” Neville sounds exasperated. “We’ve talked about this so many times.”

Ginny’s gut feels like it drops a foot, suddenly weighted down by a pound of lead that’s been waiting to fall. She lets out a slow breath through pursed lips. “It’s my dream, Nev.”

“I know,” he says, reaching out and putting a hand on top of one of hers. “And I hate to be Mr Practical, but you know how Quidditch careers can be… do you want to spend your best years on the bench?”

Ginny knows that all Nev cares about in this whole thing is Ginny’s happiness, but it still grates to be reminded of the situation. “Quidditch expert now are you?” Ginny snaps.

“No,” Neville says, voice steady. “But I’m your best friend and your confidant and _you’ve_ been complaining about this since your first year with the Harpies.”

“That’s… hard to deny.” Ginny admits. “I’m sorry Nev. I know that Quidditch wasn’t ever your thing in school. It means the world to me how supportive you are of my career. It’s just a lot, you know? Being on the team of my dreams, but not really belonging or contributing or showing what I can do. I spend nearly every day at the pitch and I have nothing to show for it. And for what?! I have nearly no social life—“

“Gee, thanks.”

“You know what I mean. All I do is work. I haven’t been on a date in eighteenths months!”

“Don’t I know it,” Neville mutters. 

“Oi! We can’t all be freelance journalists like you, with time in our schedules to wank _and_ pull, Casanova.”

“Don’t slut shame me.”

Ginny sticks out her tongue, teasing.

“If you’d just let me set you up with someone—” Neville begins.

“Forget it. I don’t need help finding a date.”

“If you don’t need help, then why don’t you go out and pull someone. Go to a bar. Hell, we could just go dancing—get out for a night, forget about the Harpies.”

“Ugh, and listen to Without Me get played like ten times?”

“You love Eminem’s catchy rage,” Neville reminds her.

“Yeah, but I hate myself for it because he so homophobic and misogynistic.”

“Point taken. But we could go somewhere they’ll play tracks from Rock Steady all night instead.”

“Yeah,” Ginny sighs noncommittally.

“Is that a yes?”

“It’s a soft maybe.”

“I’ll take it,” Neville says, latching onto even a hint of willingness. Ginny gets it. She’s not so un-self-aware she hasn’t noticed herself morphing into a bigger and bigger bummer over the last year. She hasn’t gone out with Nev (or anyone else) in ages.

“I’m making a another cuppa,” Neville informs Ginny, swigging the remains of his tea and standing up. “More mint for you?” Ginny nods. “Grand. In the meantime you can give me a quote about that brawl that broke out in the Puddlemere stands last week. That’ll give me an excuse to write about you again.” Neville smiles, and Ginny can’t help but feel comforted despite her bad mood. Nev loves her and wants to help her. If she didn’t have such a proving herself complex, it’d be no problem.

“Ta, Neville.” She hands him her empty mug and starts explaining about how tempers can run high when referees make calls that affect game outcomes.

*

Ginny gets dressed in her kit after she gets to the pitch. It’s a pointless exercise, much, she thinks self-indulgently, like all of her Quidditch exercises since she left Bath. But she’s determined to show she’s a team player, determined to support her teammates, to put on a good front. As she slams her locker shut on her street clothes, she’s flooded with memories of playing for Gryffindor with Dean. She was putting on a front then too, pretending to want him when she wanted someone else. It wasn’t fair to Dean then. It doesn’t feel all too fair to her right now either.

The locker room is empty. She’s always the first in, first dressed, first on the pitch. First to get benched—reserve players don’t start games. Without anyone to see her, Ginny wails one fist into her locker door in aggravation and instantly sucks in a sharp breath. It hurts. It’s the height of immaturity to punch things, but right now it’s hard to care. The Harpies are about to play their third game in their division playoffs series. It rankles that her team might be one game away from clinching a spot in the Premier League finals and that she’s contributed nothing to it at all. They’d have done it whether she was here or not.

Ginny envelopes her smarting fist with her free hand and heads out of the locker room to the pitch. _To the bench_, she thinks bitterly.

*

The game is fierce. Ballycastle are flying like, well… bats out of hell. Every one of their seven players knows the Harpies have momentum on their side. They steamrolled the Bats in the first match and the current game—three out of a possible five—is shaping up similarly. Holyhead’s Chasers are showing off their best form. Two years ago, Ginny would have been listening to the match on the wireless, or, if possible, watching from the stands, cheering them on, committing plays to memory to practice with her team in Bath, or with Harry and her brothers at the Burrow on a Sunday afternoon off. Now, though… Well, now cheers as Singh psyches out Ballycastle’s Keeper. Every time she and Skinner and Woolgarth carry off a perfect formation and score, it rankles.

“They’re not going to play you,” Neville has told her so many times. ”They’re abusing your loyalty to the team. They’re keeping you around because of your talent—have you if they need you—but without an accident, they’re going to keep you benched.” So far, Neville has been proven right. It’s not all bad. She earns more than any reserve player in the League; she doesn’t resent the team for keeping her—she’s a strong and versatile player, good to have around should the need arise. That’s why it strings to feel like a useless lump from her position on the bench. Second string. Again.

She sighs and the sound is drowned out by the fans cheering another goal by Singh. It was a good toss. Ginny’s read about Muggle sports, and she knows that in baseball a good pitcher can throw a ball a hundred miles an hour. Ginny thinks Singh could probably give them a run for their money.

Ginny would love to have a proper huff. The impulse is immature, and she’d feel embarrassed later no matter how good it might feel in the moment. But the point is moot, because she’s _not_ going to have a huff, not going to retreat to the locker room because her team has it in the bag. She’s not going to cross her arms and act standoffish, tuned out. She’s going to sit here and watch the team close the match and advance to the Premier League final. She’s going to high five them when they land, congratulate everyone on their best moves, show she’s committed to the team. She’s going to—

BOOM!

Before she even fully registers the sound—like a supermassive thunder clap—Ginny is on her feet, wand out, eyes casting up and down, left and right, seeking out the danger. The boom was a one-off, but has segued into the shrieking of the crowd as tens of thousands of spectators react. Ginny sees it. A section of the stands, the cheap seats, closer to the ground and further from the action, is smoking, and she can see confusion as people that’ve fallen over try to get to their feet, help others up, and—she scowls—knock others back down. It’s a brawl, but it’s not like the ones Neville’d asked her about back in his kitchen. This is serious. Ginny’s mind is racing—she’s taken in the scene in less than a second and hasn’t shared a word with the others on the bench. She hears a loud shriek from someone next to her, and notices McCool, one of the reserve Beaters, pointing into the air. Pointing her wand. Ginny follows it’s trajectory and sees their seeker, Snow, frozen in the air, clearly held in place by the force of McCool’s magic.

“What happened?!” Ginny shouts, desperate to make her voice heard over the melee.

McCool shakes her head. She’s frowning, and the crease between her brows deepen further. Ginny understands: she’s not to break McCool’s concentration as she brings Snow back to the ground.

Ginny doesn’t waste her time wringing her hands. She dashes to the medi-mages and alerts them, leading one onto the pitch to meet Snow when she lands. Once Snow’s on the ground, conscious but with a shattered right elbow, Ginny feels something in her detach from something else. She remains on the pitch for hours—Snow is taken into the locker room for treatment, fans are evacuated, suspects are detained. But she’s on auto pilot now. She remembers being at Hogwarts on 2 May, 1998, running around the grounds dodging hexes and projectiles, jinxing and tripping and eye gouging—anything she could do. She remembers how distant she felt from her body then too. At some point, she gets home. She’s too wrung out, too triggered, and too busy fielding every single one of her loved ones to give a moment’s thought to the outcome of the game.

Her mother, George, Harry, Ron, Hermione, and Neville had all showed up. Arthur agreed to let Molly be their emissary, anticipating (correctly) the parade of anxious visitors Ginny would receive (Ginny makes a mental note to get him an iPod for Christmas this year). George, then Ron and Harry show up a little later, while Molly is pouring tea down Ginny’s throat and insisting on cooking her dinner (_”Really, Ginny, there’s not much to be getting on with in your icebox!”_). They all take turns hugging her and stay for dinner, which her mum has literally magicked into being. It’s amazing, Ginny thinks, what the woman can Transfigure from water crackers and Marmite. Her brothers, Harry, and Hermione provide a much needed counterbalance to her fretting mother. George points out Ginny is fine—she hadn’t been in the air when it happened—and cracks wise about how now Ginny’ll have her chance. Neville arrives when they’re all nibbling on Jammy Dodgers and stays after Ginny has assured everyone else she’s fine. 

When it’s just her and Nev, he hits play on A Rush of Blood to the Head (“For the feelings”) and leads her to the bathroom, filling the tub with water and Muggle Epsom salts before telling her to get in. She does. She soaks in the tub and Neville sits on the bathmat, politely facing the sink across from the tub. “George said I’ll get to play now,” she tells Nev, hollowly. “Neville, I never wanted—“ 

He assures her he knows, tone grave.

*

Ginny Apparates to the Holyhead locker room bright and early the next morning.

There’s a team meeting, and Hopper debriefs them on Snow’s injury. “She’ll be out for at least a month,” Hopper reports, matter-of-factly. “The bones in her arm are so shattered that she needs extensive magical surgery to get everything back in place before Skele-Grow can be used effectively. There are concerns that if the job is rushed, and the Skele-Growed bones aren’t given time to heal, the chances of reinjuring it are too high to be worth rushing the job.” She goes on, giving them a blow by blow of the emergency General Managers’ meeting in the aftermath of the incident. “Some managers feel that security isn’t up to snuff. There’s talk that the brawls that have been breaking out anticipated this event. League Officials are meeting today to discuss new security measures, and I’ll keep you all posted on pertinent information as I receive it. In the meantime, Weasley, you’re in. We’re replaying game three of the division playoffs after a two day hiatus for the League to deal with its shit.”

Ginny nods as her teammates clap her round the shoulders with solemn looks on their faces. This is _not_ how she’d wanted to get off the bench. 

Marigold, Gwenog’s counterpart and the unlikeliest Beater Ginny’s ever met, says she wants to visit Snow, and everyone agrees. Marigold produces a card and everyone signs it before they head to St Mungo’s as a group. As she gives Snow her condolences and tells her to get well soon, Ginny tries not to think about how her time off the bench will be directly commensurate with Snow’s time convalescing, especially after Snow’s generous encouragement about Ginny’s abilities.

*

Next morning, before her first practice as starting Seeker, Ginny sips a chamomile tea. She used to live by English breakfast, but Hermione’s health kick had put an end to that. Hermione got really into what she calls self-actualisation after the war. Says she needs it, and there’s no disagreeing with that. They all do. The lot of them—all of Ginny’s friends and family—have suffered from nightmares, panic attacks, and any number of PTSD symptoms. Before they were even back at Hogwarts for their NEWTs, Hermione had read a stack of self-help and pop psychology books cover to cover, taken up meditation and yoga, traded in coffee, tea, and booze for herbal tea and fizzy water, and started seeing a therapist. Ginny hadn’t followed her lead in all things, but she had picked up a penchant for herbal teas, and they’d all seen Mind Healers, at least for a while. Hermione had told her about how, on the one hand, caffeine’s stimulating properties could increase stress levels, and, on the other, how alcohol acts as a depressant. Considering Ginny was already living with pretty high base levels of anxiety and depression at the time she humoured Hermione. The habit had stuck, and Ginny became an herbal teetotaller.

Mint is Ginny’s usual morning brew, but today her nerves are high and it feels like a chamomile morning. She forces herself to down a couple of Marmite-y crackers. She’s practicing with the main team today. She can’t let her energy flag. Besides, she’s always favoured Chasing to Seeking; she’ll need all of her focus.

*

Ginny’s at the pitch before anyone but Hopper, but they’re soon joined by the Seeking coach, Byers, who goes over tactics with Ginny as the other players trickle in.

Singh arrives last, carrying a copy of _The Daily Prophet_. “Seen this?” Her tone is angry. The rest of them shake their heads. Most had arrived before the morning edition was sent out.

Hopper grabs the paper from Singh without asking and scans the front page. Her poker face doesn’t waver. Hopper folds the paper, puts it under her arm and addresses them. “Everyone, in the air.” 

Ginny moves to grab her broom and head onto the pitch.

“Not you, Weasley. I need a word.”

Ginny’s heart sinks and she feels her face heat as the other players cast her curious and pitying looks on their way out. 

“What is it?” she asks Hopper plainly.

Hopper pulls the paper out from under her arm and hands it to Ginny. She reads the front page, righteous indignation swelling in her with each sentence.

“They think _I_ hexed Snow?!”

“You can’t let this get to you, Weasley. You need your head in the game. This incident could not have come at a worse time, but it has and we have to do our best. I know this kind of coverage is unpleasant, but you must not—I repeat _not_ let this affect your game. Do you understand me?”

Ginny nods.

“Good. This will all blow over, I assure you. We flatten Ballycastle. We secure our spot in the final. _That_ is how you show the _Prophet_ the kind of player you are. Once the inquiry is done—“

“Inquiry?” Ginny interrupts. 

“Of course, inquiry,” Hooper says, impatiently. “You think the League wants to be accused of jeopardising player and spectator safety more than they already are?”

“I—“

Hopper raises a hand. “Don’t worry about it. Mostly it’ll be League-level stuff, but after this,” Hopper gestures to the paper, “I’d be very surprised if you don’t get interviewed.”

“But—“

“It’s like I said, Weasley: the League want to cover their arses. For now, get in the air.”

Ginny doesn’t need to be told twice. She flies drills, though not to the best of her abilities. When they release the Snitch for her to practice, she’s rusty, and Byers shrieks instructions at her as she flies the length and breadth of the pitch.

When she hits the ground, Ginny is mentally wrung out from focussing so hard, from trying to keep her anxiety about everything Hopper said at bay, to keep her rage about the article from bubbling over.

“Weasley, in my office, please,” Hopper calls across the locker room when Ginny is showered and dressed. Skinner and Gwenog ‘oooh’ light-heartedly.

“Yes?” Ginny asks when she meets Hopper outside her office.

“Sorry about this Weasley, but I was right, earlier. The League has asked Magical Accidents and Catastrophes to handle the inquiry to avoid being criticised for keeping things behind closed doors. It’s a smart move on their part, to bring in a third party and head that kind of criticism off at the pass.”

“Okay,” Ginny says. She doesn’t feel okay, but she wants to show she’s cooperating.

“The witch handling the inquiry is in my office. Just answer her questions simply and directly. Don’t lose your temper no matter what she asks. This will all be over soon. Get it done, Weasley.”

“I will,” Ginny assures Hopper before walking into her office. The sight that greets her makes her rue her promise to keep her temper in check.

“Good afternoon, Weasley,” says Pansy Parkinson. “I’m here to ask you a few questions about the incident yesterday.”


	2. The Inquiry

“Parkinson?” Ginny blinks, taken aback, then quickly takes a step towards the and crosses her arms over her chest.

“In the flesh.” Parkinson resumes her seat—Hopper’s seat, actually—behind the desk, and gestures for Ginny to take the chair across from her. Ginny doesn’t appreciate the power play, Parkinson assuming a position of authority behind the desk. She remains standing.

“What are you doing here?” Ginny demands. 

“I just told you. I have a few questions. I’m with Magical Accidents and Catastrophes.”

“_You’re_ a magical accident and catastrophe,” Ginny rebuts reflexively. 

Parkinson shuts her eyes and lets out a breath through her nostrils, as though _she’s_ the one whose patience is being tested. “Thanks for that demonstration of your wit, Weasley. But if you don’t mind, I really do need to ask you these questions.” She waves a sheet of parchment in one hand. “I assure you, the sooner I finish this and can go back to loathing this ridiculous sport in peace, the happier I’ll be.”

“Quidditch is incredible,” Ginny says, then moves onto the pertinent question. “Why you?”   
“Because of all my investigative experience, I’m sure.” Parkinson’s voice is sarcastic.

“You’re an investigator? Why isn’t an Auror questioning me?”

“Oh for pity’s sake, Weasley. I’m not an investigator. Do you need me to spell it out for you? I’m a glorified janitor with Magical Accidents and Catastrophes. I was on the clean-up crew after the incident with Ballycastle and when the Premier League foisted the inquiry onto our department, I scored this sweet job.”

“Huh?” Ginny repeats, confused.

“I’ve been tasked with figuring out whether the spell came from a player—sabotage, you know? Or whether it was garden variety hooliganism—a brawl spell gone awry. It seems there’s been an unusual amount of Quidditch brawling lately.”

“Just drunk fans making spectacles of themselves.” Ginny shrugs. “It happens.” 

“But not this much, according to the League,” Parkinson counters.

Ginny supposes that’s true. There have been a lot of fights in the stands since she started her professional career. Even during her seventh year at Hogwarts, now she thinks about it. She remembers listening to games on the wireless as a kid, how commentators would occasionally remark if the crowd was especially rowdy, how every now and again a scuffle would make the news. She hasn’t given much thought to how common it’s become. “People have tended to go a little overboard with the Firewhisky since the end of the war. The afterglow, or something,” Ginny muses, but quickly stops herself. She’s not here to stand around musing with Pansy fucking Parkinson. “You still haven’t told me why _you’re_ here. Shouldn’t the DMLE be handling this kind of thing?”

“It’s not a criminal investigation, Weasley, just an inquiry, and since Magical Accidents and Catastrophes responded to the incident and the League reached out to us as a third party, the job’s all ours.”

“But why _you_?” Ginny whinges.

“Thick as ever, I see,” Parkinson says. “Come on, Weasley. Put two and two together. The League just wants to be seen to be doing something. But they don’t actually want to do anything. And MAC has been looking for an excuse to sack me since my first day.”

“What?” Ginny asks, confused now.

“Nevermind.” Parkinson waves a hand dismissively. “Let’s just say they’ve given me an assignment they know I can’t close. Like I’m going to be able to figure out who cast a hex from a crowd of more than ten thousand fucking people. _Don’t_ pardon my French.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.” The words are out of Ginny’s mouth before she can even think. “Wait,” Ginny starts, her brain catching up with Parkinson’s rant, “so you don’t think I cast the hex?”

“You!?” Parkinson actually scoffs. “Only someone who didn’t go to school with you for eight years would think your Gryffindor arse is capable of hexing a colleague for your own professional advancement.”

“I have no problem hexing people,” Ginny parries, then pauses. The last thing she needs to do right now is argue with Parkinson’s points on principle. She’s already under scrutiny here. She should be insisting she’s innocent. She _is_ innocent, for fucks sake!

“Don’t I know it. Still casting Bat Bogey hex at anyone who looks at Potter the wrong way?” Parkinson counters. “I didn’t say you’re not an arsehole. I said you wouldn’t hex someone under _these_ circumstances.”

“If you don’t think I hexed Snow, why don’t you move on with your inquiry?”

“Weasley, have you been listening to anything I’ve said? This inquiry is a farce, a performance. The League and MAC just want to show they’re taking the allegations of negligence seriously.”

“But they’re not actually taking the allegations seriously,” Ginny says, equal parts relieved no one in power thinks she attacked a colleague and indignant that the League doesn’t really care about player safety.

“Got it in… well, not one,” Parkinson says, condescendingly deadpan. “Now, will you please answer my questions so that I can get out of here, get sacked, and start looking for a new job?”

“Fine,” Ginny relents. “But I’m not sitting across Hopper’s desk from you like I’ve been sent to see the Deputy Head.”

One corner of Parkinson’s lip quirks up, and her head tilts to one side. “Have it your way then. Pub?”

“I don’t drink.”

“Of course you don’t. Can’t have those empty calories getting in the way of your flying form, I’m sure.” Parkinson sounds… weird. Ginny can’t figure out the tone. It should be insulting, even resentful, but Parkinson doesn’t quite manage either. Parkinson stands up again and straightens her robes. “Last I checked, pubs serve water and tea. This is England Weasley, not the fucking Gulag.”

*

Ginny insists on choosing the pub, determined not to let Parkinson control the situation, even if she has made it all sound a bit pathetic.

A server plunks matching Pellegrinos in front of her and Parkinson. Ginny thanks him, then turns to Parkinson. “I thought being dry was beneath you,” she says, squeezing the lemon wedge over her glass before casting it aside and taking a sip.

“Like I’m going to give MAC more reasons to sack me. The last thing I need is a citation for drinking on the job. I would still like to be employable to someone after I lose this position.”

Perhaps it’s growing up with seven brothers who constantly told her to mind her own business, or perhaps it was being in a relationship with a boy who shut her out, confiding in her brother and Hermione instead, or perhaps it’s just the nature of being a veteran, one for whom secrecy is associated with threat, with danger, but Ginny has never been good at letting her questions go unasked. It’s bad enough they’re often unanswered. _Fuck it_, she thinks. _I’m going in._ “Why does MAC want to sack you? And why do you keep that job if they hate you so much?”

“I guess Potter’s not the only nosey parker in your little posse,” Parkinson says evasively. 

“Can’t ever give a straight answer, can you?” 

Parkinson grimaces and takes a sip of Pellegrino. She lets out an “aaah” and sets down her glass forcefully, dramatically. “Tell you what, Weasley, if you answer my questions—for the inquiry, mind you; not personal questions because _I_, unlike you, am not a busybody—“

Ginny snorts.

“—then,” Parkinson forges on, “I will answer your question.”

“My questions, you mean. That’s how quid pro quo works.”

“Latin, Weasley?” Parkinson’s condescending tone sounds rude as fuck. 

“Snob.”

Parkinson squirms a bit, but seems to be trying not too. She looks uncomfortable all of a sudden. “Sorry,” she says quietly, rapidly, as though trying to expel the word from her body as quickly as possible. 

Ginny is flooded with memories of her seventh year, of the group meetings—reconciliation, McGonagall and the facilitators had called them. Parkinson and Bulstrode and Zabini, the only seventh-year Slytherins who’d returned to finish their educations, had often squirmed, often looked uncomfortable, but, loathe as Ginny is to admit it, even to herself, they’d also shut up, at least feigned listening, and apologised. They hadn’t caused trouble. She knows Parkinson apologised to Harry in person; Harry’d told Ginny after the fact that it seemed genuine. He’d accepted it and shaken her hand. And McGonagall vouched for a number of students with blighted moral records when theys graduated—assured prospective employers that mistakes had been copped to and amends had been made. Still, it’s so odd to hear Parkinson of all people apologise for being a snob. Especially after tossing insults back and forth since Ginny walked into Hopper’s office.

“Fine,” Ginny says. It’s what Harry would do, what McGonagall would do. It’s not in her nature to forgive readily, to soften, to compromise. But nor is it in Parkinson’s nature to offer apologies. “I’ll answer your stupid questions, but then you have to answer one of mine.”

“Done,” Pansy says, as though they’re closing a deal. She lifts her Pellegrino and tentatively tips her glass towards Ginny. 

Ginny looks at Parkinson for a moment, wonders what the fuck she’s doing, and picks up her own glass to chink it against Parkinson’s. “It’s a deal.”

*

Parkinson’s questions are asinine, but not offensive, so Ginny calls that a result. Where was Ginny when the hex was cast. What action did she take when she realised Snow had been injured. Did Snow have any professional rivals, to Ginny’s knowledge?

“Aside from me, you mean?” Ginny says without thinking. “Shit. Not actually, you know. Just, that’s what the paper said, since I’m the reserve.”

“To your knowledge have Snow or any of the other players received any threats? Owls, notes, that kind of thing?”

“None that I know of.”

“How would you describe the tone of spectator heckle—both yesterday and more broadly? Hostile?”

“What?” Ginny asks. “Quidditch fans are always… enthusiastic.”

“I’m wondering about a connection to prior incidents. Neville Longbottom mentioned them in an article recently, and there’ve been other reports about Quidditch hooliganism. I’m wondering if these are all merely sports rivalries, or perhaps the actions of… others. Pureblood supremacists who’ve lost their standing and are looking for any outlet for their resentment.”

“They’re Quidditch fans, Parkinson. They yell at one another.”

“Okay, that’s it I think. Thanks Weasley,” Parkinson tosses a few sickles down on the table—enough to cover both of their cheap drinks, and gets out of her seat.

“Nice try.” Before Ginny knows it, her hand is around Parkinson’s wrist, and she’s pulling her back down into her seat.

“Worth a shot.” Parkinson shrugs as she settles back into the booth across from Ginny.

“So?” Ginny probes. Why beat around the bush?

“So what?” Parkinson says, and she doesn’t even bother repressing the smirk growing on her face. Little shit just loves being contrary. _Well, fair enough_ says a voice in Ginny’s head. She immediately scolds herself for daring to relate to Pansy Parkinson.

“Soooo,” Ginny says, drawing out the vowel, “why does MAC have it out for you?”

Parkinson huffs. “Whatever,” she says, seemingly to herself. “Not like it’s some secret anyway. The Ministry was pressured into hiring us after the war—the children of Death Eaters and sympathisers, you know? Especially if we were minors or only just of age when we did… stuff.” She pauses and waves to the server, gesturing between their two empty glasses when she catches his eye, then mouthing ‘thanks.’ “Water’s really not strong enough for this, but whatever. McGongall stood up for us, you know, after we graduated—those of us who came back and went to the reconciliation sessions. Obviously she’s pretty buddy buddy with Shacklebolt, and, to be honest, I think he believes in the whole rehabilitation scheme as much as she does. Doesn’t want a pack of baby Death Eaters running amok, unemployed and resenting society for it. So he got us entry level jobs. Problem is, a lot of folks don’t want us there.”

Ginny nods. “Can’t really blame them. They didn’t spend a year with you—didn’t see you and the others, you know…” she searches for the right word but comes up short. “Reconciling.”

“You’re not wrong.” 

The server shows up with fresh glasses of sparkling water and they both thank him. Parkinson downs half of hers in one. Ginny just holds her glass with two hands, feeling the chilly condensation on her palms and fingers.

“That’s it, really. They don’t want us around, but they can’t sack us without just cause.” Parkinson shrugs. She keeps doing that. It flusters Ginny. Indiscriminate shrugging is Neville’s thing. Parkinson has no business running around affecting gestures that Ginny finds comforting and familiar. 

_Shit_, Ginny thinks. She really must be hard up for sexy liaisons if her brain is thirsty enough to find _Parkinson_ in any way… anything. 

“I think Blaise is okay. He’s pushing paper in Ludicrous Patents and I think he’s slowly thawing out the others in his office. It’s hard not to like Blaise.” 

“I’ll have to take your word on that.”

Parkinson has the audacity to shrug again.

“Millicent’s been having a tougher time of it in Transportation, but she’s keeping her head down.”

“And you?”

“I get to clean up messes after MAC first responders show up and heroically handle damage control.”

“You’re a cleaner.”

“Yup.” Pansy slouches into her seat and pops her P, lips moist with Pellegrino. It’s not hot.

“How the mighty have fallen.” The words just fly out of Ginny’s mouth. She’s not really sorry to have said them. It’s true: Parkinson and the other Slytherins used to strut around the castle like they were holding court. It’s not the worst thing for them to be brought down to the level of mere mortals.

Parkinson just nods. It’s weird, Ginny thinks. Sure, she spent ten months reconciling with Parkinson and the others, but she’d still imagined that they’d all have chips on their shoulders, be wandering around like royalty in exile. 

Ginny opens her mouth to say something else—anything else—but she’s interrupted by a shout from a wizard who’s just walked through the door of The George and Dragon.

“Oi! Death Eater!” 

All noise stops in the pub. Ginny’s heart begins racing. Her wand is out before she knows it and all her senses are on high alert. She scans the whole room but detects no danger.

“Sit down!” Parkinson insists in a whisper, returning Ginny’s earlier action and pulling her back into her seat by the arm. 

“I’m talking to you!” He staggers further into the pub, clearly drunk, and levels an accusing finger at Parkinson.

“Come on, Kevin,” one of the bartenders says, but the man—Kevin—holds up a hand.

“This who you’re serving now?” he demands of the bartender. “You know what they did to my Tess. How dare you show your face amongst decent people, you murdering bitch!” Kevin approaches Ginny and Parkinson’s table, and Ginny stands up this time, pulling her arm out of Parkinson’s grasp. Her blood is rushing in her ears. She may not like Parkinson, but she knows for a solid gold fact that she never killed anyone. Parkinson has never had the brass to do anything but blow hot air. And besides, Ginny doesn’t make it her business to sit around while men call women bitches.

“Hey—“ Ginny begins, but Parkinson cuts her off.

”Weasley, _please_ don’t. Trust me, it’s not worth it.” 

“Who asked, you, Death Eater?” Kevin demands.

“She’s not a Death Eater,” Ginny rebuts. It feels surreal. She was _just_ beginning to accept the reality that she’d indeed been having some kind of civil conversation with Parkinson. But now she’s defending her? “She was still in school—“

“Her parents are in Azkaban! Convicted!”

“They are,” Ginny agrees. “_They_ deserve it. She doesn’t.”

“Weasley, _please_.” Parkinson sounds on the verge of tears.

“This the company you keep? I thought the Weasleys were a decent family,” Kevin spits out. “No surprise you’re hexing people now—”

Ginny feels as though she’s been slapped. She raises her wand, the first syllable of the Bat Bogey Hex on her lips, when a fist whizzes past her. Kevin stumbles backwards slightly under the force of an underwhelming but surprising punch. Ginny’s head whips around and she sees Parkinson, now standing, first raised as though ready to strike again.

“You _bitch_,” Kevin shouts, and lunges forwards. Ginny steps between him and Parkinson and hears a few cat calls from the other patrons as she shoves him backwards. The situation only deteriorates from there.

*

“Nice shiner,” Neville says, as Ginny tumbles out of his hearth. He sets _1000 Magical Herbs and Fungi_ down on his coffee table and heads to the kitchen, returning a moment later with a dishtowel. With a wave of his wand, he fills it with ice cubes. “Sit,” he instructs. “Explain.” His impression of McGonagall’s brogue is comically bad. Ginny laughs as she sits and accepts the towel of ice, pressing it against her black eye.

“You should see the other guy,” she offers, trying for levity.

“You got in a fight?!” Neville demands, clearly concerned. “Wait, scratch the tone of surprise. But seriously, are you okay? Did you go to St Mungos? Are you in trouble with the DMLE?”

“It’s nothing, Nev; just a bruised eye. I promise. And no DMLE. When the dust settled the owner of the pub asked us—”

“Us?”

Ginny continues over the interruption. “—asked us,” she repeats, “not to lodge a complaint. Apparently this sad sack—a regular of his—has been getting himself into a lot of scrapes lately and the DMLE aren’t looking too kindly on him.”

“Sad sack? Why were you fighting a sad sack? Did he atta—”

“It’s no big deal, honestly. This guy came in—drunk. He’d obviously lost someone in the war. He saw Parkinson and started ranting—“

“Pansy? Why were you at a pub with Pansy?”

Ginny removes the ice from her eye long enough to cast Neville a Look. “How the tables have turned,” Ginny says, and adds, in her best radio-drama detective voice, “I’m asking the questions here, Mr Longbottom: since when are _you_ on first name terms with Parkinson?”

“Evasive,” Neville scolds, but sighs and gives in. “Since I started writing for _The Quibbler_. She works for Magical Accidents and Catastrophes now—“

“I know—“

“How— never mind. I started running into her for work; she’d be around after incidents Luna wanted covered, or, if I’d got to MAC to get a statement, she’d usually be around. I got the impression…” Neville halts for a moment, and looks away from Ginny.

“I know she’s having a shit time at work.”

“How am _I_ the one getting the third degree here?” Neville questions. Ginny amps up the volume on her own McGonagall ‘Explain Yourself’ Look. “Well it seemed like some of her co-workers were, you know, hostile. Clean up crew can be a rough gig, but it’s good work—has to be done. But in the office, you know how people can be, complaining she got their coffee order wrong, petty shit, you know? Like it’s her job to keep everyone’s cups topped up. Anyway, after NEWTs year, well… She’d apologised—let bygones be bygones and all that. And, friendly bloke that I am, I say hello when I see her. It’s not like we’re bosom chums or anything, but when I run into her we usually have a chat, sometimes grab a tea.” Neville shrugs and it suddenly hits Ginny that’s where Parkinson picked it up from.

Ginny slouches back into Neville’s sofa dramatically and presses the ice back against her face. “Please,” she implores, “please tell me you haven’t slept with Parkinson.”

“No.” Neville laughs. “Wait a minute, what’s going on here? Why am I the one answering the questions? Are you into Pansy? What were you doing together in that pub!?”

*

After assuring Neville that she and Parkinson were at The George and Dragon for purely professional reasons (“A likely story. No need to be embarrassed, Gin. Haven’t I been telling you for eighteen months to get a leg over?”) and using her shiner to get Neville to feed her dinner, Neville applies some Murtlap Essence to her bruise (“Extracted this myself!” he beams). He offered, and Ginny isn’t going to refuse. She has a match in two days, and as they’re in the division final series, there’ll be even more press than usual. It’d be a miracle if her shiner doesn’t make the _Prophet_, and then there’d be Howlers from her mum to contend with.

By 11pm, Ginny’s back home and in bed. If she gets to sleep right away, she can manage maybe six and a half hours of sleep before grabbing something to eat and Apparating to the pitch bright and early before the game. 

Only she doesn’t fall asleep right away. Her mind refuses to stop thinking about the newspaper accusations, the sham inquiry, her performance at tomorrow’s practice, how clinching the Harpies’ spot in the finals will fall to her. And on top of it all, Parkinson: Parkinson being equally rude and humble; Parkinson working at a job she hates, but clearly trying to keep it. Parkinson having friendly chats and teas with Neville. Ginny wants to be grumpy with Neville about it, but can’t muster it. He’s goodwilled by nature and Ginny trusts his judgement. Besides, hadn’t Ginny herself been sharing a drink with Parkinson? Hadn’t Parkinson sat there and said nothing and just taken Kevin’s insults, and then thrown a punch—a badass, Muggle punch like Sarah fucking Connor!—when he’d slagged off Ginny?

Her brain feels like a clock whose cogs won’t stop whirring. It feels like hours of staring at the ceiling, indulging the same, circular thoughts, before she falls asleep.

*

Ginny is having a shit day. Neville’s Murtlap had worked on her eye, but with only a couple hours of sleep and having yesterday used a fair few muscles she’s not used to exercising in her bar brawl, she feels like everything from her traps to her fucking eyelids have been replaced with deflated Muggle tyres.

She doesn’t fly her best at practice, and this isn’t the second tier; it shows—it gets noticed. None of her teammates are shitty, but they do all expect the best. Ginny hates it every time one of them tells her they remember how nervous they were when they were first called up—but that she can’t let it affect her focus.

After practice, Byers keeps Ginny behind for an hour to go over tactics and Ginny is ravenous by the time she’s showered, dressed, and leaving the pitch.

All she wants to do is eat half a dozen pasties and for the first time in a while she thinks how nice it would be to toss back a pint of Guinness. She compromises with herself—one pastie and a salad. She hates being being the kind of person who gives a single thought to eating anything she wants to, but keeping in shape is part of her job, and when it comes to dark stout… well, she knows she’ll feel better in the long run if she resists the impulse.

_Fuck it_ she thinks. _I’m having two pasties._

*

Ginny heads to Gregg’s and buys four pasties to go, then heads to the Ministry. Most departments close up for the day at 5:00. It’s ten to the hour now, and she hasn’t got wind of any magical accidents or catastrophes, so she doubts Parkinson and her cohorts will be working late.

Ginny hangs about in the lobby for a few minutes, glancing this way and that, looking for a black bob.

After a few minutes, she spots her: Parkinson is heading for a Floo, arms crossed over her chest, head down.

Ginny scans the room for her dad or Percy as she strides across the Atrium. Feeling confident she’s the only Weasley in the room, she calls “Oi! Parkinson!” before Parkinson can step into a hearth.

“Weasley?” Parkinson asks, head turning and eyes falling on Ginny, greasy paper bag in hand. “What are you doing here?”

“I— huh.“ It occurs to her that she has no answer.

“Didn’t realise that was a puzzler.” Parkinson gives Ginny a Look.

As Ginny’d stood in the queue at Gregg’s, tapping her foot and humming along to Mary J Blige calling out hateration, in her minds’ eye she saw Parkinson’s clenched fist zoom past her head before connecting with Kevin, then Parkinson’s livid face. When Ginny reached the counter and opened her mouth to ask for two pasties, her mouth doubled her order in size without consulting her brain, and her feet then took the lead to the nearest Apparation point. And here she is.

“Uh. Pastie?” Ginny offers, just like any normal personal carrying twice as many pasties as they need. She tries to get ahold of herself. “You know, to say thank you for…” Ginny trails off.

“For?” Parkinson asks in an amused, leading tone.

“For… defending my honour?” Ginny tries. She’s got no footing here. She’s used to being the one to throw the first punch, to defending other’s honour. Parkinson snorts and Ginny carries on, valiantly. “I’ve got four here, but we can go back to Gregg’s if you’re hungry too,” she jokes, and grins at Parkinson’s eye-roll. “I mean, unless you’re too posh to eat Gregg’s pasties.”

“I’d rather be pastied than posh,” Parkinson counters.

“Right,” Ginny says, feeling like an ineloquent lummox. “Er. Mine, then? Or there’s a park nearby.”

Parkinson stares at Ginny for a moment. Ginny feels as though she’s being sized up.

“Yours, then. You can make me a cuppa. You know—” she raises her eyebrows insinuatingly “—to say _thank you_.”

*

“Ugh, ginger, Weasley? You do realise the jokes write themselves, don’t you?” Parkinson complains as Ginny hands her a mug of delicious ginger tea and takes a seat across from her on the sofa.

“You can drink that or water,” Ginny tells Parkinson. “How much time _have_ you been spending with Neville, anyway?”

“What?”

“He’s always cops a tude about my healthy, herbal teas too.”

“Oh,” Parkinson says, taking a sip. “I didn’t realise he’d said anything to you about us…” she trails off.

“You?” Ginny presses. She knows Neville didn’t lie to her about not shagging Parkinson. She trusts Neville implicitly. But she is less sure about Parkinson’s feelings towards her best friend.

“Having the occasional cup of _real_ tea together.”

“Yeah. He told me last night while he was tending my heroic wounds.”

“Ah.”

Silence—bit awkward, but nothing dire—descends and then both sip from their mugs.

“So why’d you punch that bloke?” Ginny blurts after what feels like eons of quiet sipping, but is probably no more than thirty seconds.

“You complaining? He was seconds away from hitting you,” Parkinson points out. As though Ginny needs reminding. As though Ginny hasn’t been replaying the scene for the last twenty-four hours.

“No,” Ginny says truthfully. “But he was slagging you off first, and worse. And you told me to let it be. But then when he insulted me,” Ginny stops. She doesn’t say, then you leapt into action like a badass Terminator killer. 

Parkinson doesn’t say anything. She takes a sip of her tea, ears going pink where they’re holding back the dark hair tucked behind them. She clears her throat. “I submitted the paperwork from our interview,” Parkinson tells Ginny, who’s now suffering from whiplash. “I don’t think you’ll hear anymore about it, at least not from MAC. I’m not exactly pals with the people in the office, but I don’t think anyone thinks Ginny Weasley, Order of Merlin 2nd Class, is hexing her own teammates.”

“Tell that to the _Prophet_,” Ginny says, bitterly. They’d run another article about the incident today, and been sure to note how Ginny had been seen practicing with the team, as though it’s suspect for a reserve player to cover for someone away with an injury.

“I overhead some of the MAC higher-ups talking,”

“You eavesdropped, you mean.”

Parkinson shrugs. “Apparently the League is going to institute some security measures. Hard divisions between home and away stands, stop selling booze at games, that kind of thing. They think it’ll get the public off their back and blow a smoke screen over the fact that the person who hexed your Seeker, whoever they are, is getting off scot-free.”

“Yeah, I heard the same thing,” Ginny says.

“Now who’s the eavesdropper.”

“Still you,” Ginny counters, adding a shit eating grin for good measure. “_I_ got the news in a team meeting earlier today.”

“I’m going to recommend a zero-tolerance policy for the use of slurs and hate speech amongst spectators in my report,” Parkinson adds abruptly. “I talked to some people from the stands, and some mentioned that those who started the fight were using anti-Muggleborn slurs.”

“You think that’s related to the hex? I think Snow’s family is pureblood.”

“Pretty sure. I think the hex that hit her went awry, and was cast by some prick who’s got a complex about not being at the top of the pecking order anymore.”

“What makes you think that?”

“Because I know people like that. I’ve _been_ people like that. There are people who didn’t go back to Hogwarts, who haven’t changed their minds, who ignorantly believe post-war society has robbed them of something.”

“You don’t feel that way?”

“No.”

“But you think zero-tolerance will help? Would it have stopped you back at Hogwarts? Before the war?”

“No,” Parkinson admits. “But if it hadn’t been tolerated when I was growing up, I might have questioned the rightness of the word when it _was_ used, and the people using it. Of what it stood for.”

Ginny thinks about that for a minute. Silence stretches between them again. Soon it's too thick to bear. 

“So,” Ginny asks, tentatively. It’s not her usual brand. She mentally slaps herself for being a wet end. She’s not one to mince words, and she doesn’t think Parkinson is either. “Job intact, do you think?”

“Hard to know yet,” Parkinson answers. “Nothing has been released to the public yet. We’ll see what happens after the public weighs in about how MAC—by which I mean, I, one member of the cleanup crew and untrained investigator—failed to find Snow’s hexer. If people call for blood, I suspect that’ll be the end of my meteoric rise at the Ministry.”

“Kinglsey won’t let you get scapegoated,” Ginny assures her, certain.

“Kingsley?” Parkinson scoffs. “For fuck’s sake, I am drinking herbal tea with a twenty-year-old on first name terms with the Minister of Magic.”

“Yeah, we go way back,” Ginny jokes. Then Summons the paper bag and a couple of plates from the table in the other corner of the split living-room/kitchen. “Pasty?” she offers, snatching the Gregg’s bag out of the air and waving it enticingly.

“In for a knut,” Parkinson mumbles, grabbing one of the hovering plates.

*

Ginny feels physically sick. She’d love nothing more than to blame it on Gregg’s, but she knows what game-day nerves feel like. She played in second-tier finals. iI>I won _the finals,_ she reminds herself. She’s never been one to play the shy mouse. It’s just been a long time since she played a professional match, and everyone feels nervous before a game. She’s just got some totally standard, pre-game queasiness. Everything is normal and fine.

After Gwenog shakes hands with the Bats’ captain, fourteen players kick off hard from the grass and Ginny feels—all nerves, all libellous sodding newspaper articles aside—good. She’s here, in the air with the Holyhead Harpies—her dream team. Sure, she’s not playing her favoured position, but it’s her job, _hers_ to close this game.

As the Chasers, Beaters, and Keepers get the action going, Ginny sticks to her job. She’s not here to watch today, not here to concern herself with what manoeuvres the Chasers are pulling off. She’s here to find the Snitch. Ginny scans the skies, switching positions on the pitch, varying height, and marking Ballycastle’s Seeker, Jarvis, keeping him always in her peripheral vision. She’s not giving him any chance to catch the Snitch first.

The crowd is clearly loving the game—‘oohs!’ and ‘ahhs!’ and groans all rent the air intermittently. The Harpies strength has been Beating for several years, and Ballyhead has a strong set of Chasers. Ginny has no doubt that Gwenog and Marigold can keep them at bay and give the Harpies’ Chasers plenty of chances to score. But if Ginny can make an early catch, none of that will matter anyway.

Every time Ginny spots a butterfly, a bird, or a leaf on the wind, her heart rate skyrockets. The game has been afoot for a while, and she’s pouring all of her energy into maintaining her focus. She _will_ catch the Snitch. She has to. A massive cheer erupts from the Ballyhead stands, and Ginny’s fingers clench her handle of her broom. The fans break into a song, the lyrics of which Ginny can’t make out, and she spares a thought for Parkinson’s theory about disaffected motherfuckers.

And then she sees it: the Snitch, hovering like a bumblebee near the Harpies goalposts. Hutchcroft, their Keeper, looks steadfastly ahead—eyes on the game—and Ginny is sure she’s seen the Snitch and is determined not to give its position away to the opposition, even if it means not alerting Ginny. But Ginny doesn’t need the alert. This part is her job. Ginny leans against her handle and shoots towards the posts. Hutchcroft drops ten feet in the air, giving Ginny clearance, but the Snitch, sensing Ginny’s approach, suddenly jets away, flitting this way and that across the pitch, straight into the action as Chasers pass the Quaffle and the Beaters hit Bludgers at opposing players. 

Ginny weaves through them all, keeping the Snitch ever in her sights, and closing in. She’s flying so fast the roar of the spectators in the stands is drowned out by the air rushing past her ears. She takes a moment to scan the sky ahead of her—Jarvis is nowhere in sight, and Ginny has been obsessed with Quidditch long enough to know that turning around to see if your opponent is catching you up can lose you a match. It doesn’t matter if he is. She just has to fly as quickly and as accurately as she can. So she does. She flattens herself against her broom, gaining ever more on the tiny golden ball. As she inches closer, the fans become loud enough that she can hear them again—shrieking and stomping. She grins, reaches forward—it’s almost in reach. She kicks backwards slightly with her left leg, urging every bit of speed out of her broom. There, the Snitch, so close she can almost feel it on her fingertips. She reaches out, her joints straining, and makes the catch.


	3. The Date

_Weasley’s Woeful Waffling!_ The headline is printed in huge, accusing text. The accompanying photo of Ginny cluelessly celebrating while her teammates grimace and facepalm is even worse. Beneath the huge, humiliating photo it reads: “The rookie fumbled her first Premier League game when she made a Bulgarian catch…” Ginny doesn’t finish it. She reads the first few lines and casts the paper aside before promptly taking back to bed and pulling the covers over her face.

As if she needs reminding. She felt so fucking good—so vindicated—when she caught the Snitch yesterday. A catch in her first professional match! And playing her secondary position, no less! She’d held the Snitch aloft and whooped, but after a moment, when sound had penetrated her punch-drunk haze, she realised the cheers from the home crowd weren’t celebratory. Why were they groaning?

Ginny cast around, looking to her teammates, as they punched the air in frustration, gazes downcast. It had taken a couple of minutes for Ginny to take everything in. The scoreboard, the Ballyhead Chasers gathered, hugging and gleeful, by the Harpies’ goal posts. They’d managed to eke out a few more goals while Ginny tailed the Snitch. The scoreboard was damning: Harpies: 170; Bats: 180.

Hopper had read Ginny the riot act (“A Seeker always—ALWAYS—checks the score before closing the catch. Do you hear me! You’re just lucky it wasn’t a do or die game. Head in the game, Weasley, or you’re back on the bench.”). 

Ginny had taken it, wordless, defenceless. What could she say? ‘Oops’ didn’t quite cover it. 

Worse than Hopper’s incandescent rage and reminders of how to comport oneself in a match were her teammates sombre commiserations. None of them raised their voice in blame, but it was clear everyone was despondent about losing the chance to advance to the finals without playing out the full playoff series.

Ginny reaches her right arm out from under her blanket fort of shame and gropes around on her nightable for her wand. When she finds it, she waves it in the direction of her Muggle stereo. Only Tegan and Sara understand the crushing weight of her self-doubt this morning.

*

Ginny emerges from the covers under duress. “I don’t like it out here,” she says, when Neville gives her a three second warning, then pulls back her blanket.

“The cold light of day _is_ harsh,” Neville concedes, nodding soberly. He shoos Ginny over and gets into bed next to her. “But, if you recall, last night you made me give you my solemn oath that I would get you out of bed this morning in plenty of time for you to get to the pitch, head held high, for practice.”

“I regret it,” Ginny tells him, not that that stops him.

“Yet here I am, paragon of Gryffindor chivalry. I pulled Gryffindor’s sword out of a hat and slayed an evil serpent, did you know?” Neville blushes a bit, and Ginny is chuffed that Neville—shy, bullied Neville—has eked out some confidence for himself, even if it’s still shaky and only shared with his closest friends.

“Think I heard about that, yeah,” Ginny concedes. “Now, what did you bring me?”

“There are almond croissants on the table. And,” Neville offers, “if you exchange these misery tunes for something a bit more energising, I’ll even make you a steaming mug of the swill you drink instead of real tea. Un-English.” 

“Tegan and Sara aren’t misery tunes!” Ginny insists.

“Not inherently, no. But this playlist is. How about some P!nk?” Neville suggests. “She writes about hating herself too, but, you know, with more of a gym jam vibe.”

“Too upbeat right now, Nev.”

“Can we compromise on Rilo Kiley?” he offers. 

“Aggro depression,” Ginny considers aloud. “Works for me.”

*

Ginny arrives at the home pitch as early as ever. She still feels grim, bleak, and furious with herself, but she has a modicum of energy that Neville passed on to her through his supportive presence and insistence on slightly more galvanising music. It’ll have to be enough. She can’t blow practice today. She needs to be more on her game than ever, not less. She can’t let a mistake and bad coverage affect her game. Getting a reputation for being over-sensitive is as sure a way to kill a Quidditch career as being a known choker.

Practice goes as normally as it can. Her teammates go as hard as ever, for which Ginny is truly thankful. If there’s one thing she can’t stand, it’s being babied. And, well, if Byers is calling out directions so obvious as to be annoying, Ginny can’t really blame her, all things considered. It’s humiliating, but Ginny complies, carrying out drills, demonstrating the tactics and techniques the coach bellows at her.

By the end of practice, Ginny has achieved new levels of sweatiness. She showers with the others, and when everyone is back in the locker room, getting dressed and ready to go, Gwenog and the others each come around, clap her on the back or give her a solidarity punch on the shoulder and assure her that they know they’ll take the next game and seal the Harpies’ spot in the final.

*

Ginny returns home to a clean kitchen. “Thanks Neville,” she mutters to her dutiful platonic partner, absent now, but appreciated all the same.

There’s nothing in Ginny’s fridge. Not that it matters today—Sundays at the Burrow are sacrosanct. And they’re doing a belated birthday celebration for Hermione today, so there’s no way Ginny can blow it off. 

It’s 3:00pm. Ginny could head to the Burrow now, but it’s quite early and though Ginny loves her family, she’d not sure plastering on a smile for any longer than necessary is what the Healer ordered.

Ginny heads into her bedroom and flops down on her bed, feet still on the floor, but arms spread out. The tips of the fingers other hand brush against something—this morning’s paper. Ginny groans and rolls onto her stomach, pressing her face into the covers so hard yellow spots float around on the inside of her eyelids. She lets out a muffled scream and then just lays on the bed for several minutes. She feels like she could stay here a long time, just brooding, eyes closed, the world shut out. Only it’s not terribly comfortable to breathe: her nose is scrunched up and her face feels moist from the air she’s exhaling. It’s a bit gross, actually. 

In a flash Ginny pushes herself back up. Her eyes land on the paper in all its heinousness.

_I’ll have a bath,_ she decides. _An Epsom salt soak._ Practice today pushed her to her limits, and she wants to be on her most limber flying form tomorrow for their match. _No mistakes tomorrow,_ she tells herself like a mantra. She’s not leaving anything to chance—not even muscle tension.

She starts towards the bathroom, but quickly stalls, turns around, and, because a little more wallowing can’t hurt, snatches the _Prophet_ off the bed and takes it with her.

*

“It’s okay,” Ginny tells herself, torso and thighs now covered with briny water in her tub, feet pressed against the wall, just over the tap.

She grabs her wand off the ledge of the tub and waves it wordlessly. The _Prophet_ flies into Ginny’s hand. Carefully, she lets her wand drop gently onto the bathmat while keeping the paper in hand. Ginny lifts her wet left hand out of the hot water and pulls the paper open.

_Weasley’s Woeful Waffling!_

This time Ginny reads on, beyond the first few lines. The author offers a veritable smorgasbord of suggestions for Ginny’s misplay: everything from condescending remarks about a lack of focus due to her unresolved feelings for Harry, to rookie mistakes, to intimations about match throwing and whether or not the Weasley family earned some much needed gold on the Harpies’ loss.

_I should not read any more of this,_ Ginny thinks, furious, now sitting upright in the tub, not remotely relaxed as she makes it to the bottom of the page and flips, as instructed, to the continued rant against her professionalism on page six. There’s not much more on the subsequent page. There is another photo, though; this one not of Ginny, but of the devastated fans in the Harpies’ stands—two dozen or so faces moving through expressions of disbelief on a loop. The article hurts. It’s a hatchet job. Far, far worse are the gutted expressions on the fans’ faces. Ginny’s gut clenches—a lifelong Quidditch fan, she knows how shit it can feel when your team does badly. 

But she’s not just a fan anymore. And now, knowing how the other side of the coin feels, she also feels an inkling of guilt for every time she went on a tirade against a player for making a misplay.

Ginny looks at their downcast and shocked expressions. It’s extremely surreal, knowing that she caused so many strangers to feel anything so strongly. There’s a kid standing on one of the benches literally holding his face like that kid in Home Alone. And a few seats away—

Well, well, well. “Thought you didn’t like Quidditch, Parkinson,” Ginny mumbles, a wave of self-satisfaction joining the riot of emotions already roiling in Ginny’s stomach. Because there she is, in black and white: Pansy Parkinson, wearing a Harpies jersey and practically biting off a knuckle in a state of unmitigated fan frenzy.

Ginny states at Parkinson for what feels like several minutes, watching her bite into her knuckle before her eyes go wide and she drops her hand to her chest in shock—presumably the moment Ginny made her Bulgarian catch.

Eventually, Ginny tosses the _Prophet_ onto the floor and slides back into the tub. The image of Parkinson in the stands doesn’t make her feel _better,_ but it has added horniness to the mix, and, unlike bad press coverage, _that_ Ginny can do something about.__

_ __ _

*

“Neville?” Ginny calls from his living room into the flat at large. “Are you home?”

“One minute!” he bellows in response. 

Ginny wanders into the kitchen, fills the kettle with an _Auguamenti_ and then boils the water with a second tap.

She’s filling a tea-egg with Yorkshire Gold leaves for Neville when she hears his feet pattering down the hall and into the kitchen.

“Cheeky wank?” Ginny asks, pouring water over the leaves.

“Takes one to know one,” Neville parries. 

“True enough,” Ginny admits, turning around to hand Neville his mug before turning back to her own empty one and filling it with simple hot water. She leans against the counter and Neville shuffles over to do the same. “It’s just so much more convenient,” Ginny elaborates. “You have no idea how long lesbian sex takes.”

Neville laughs. “Don’t tell me, your refusal to go out with anyone for over a year has actually been a time saving measure.”

“The eighth habit of highly effective people,” Ginny affirms, deadpan.

“Trade in sex for wanking,” Neville finishes. They both chuckle and sip their hot bevs.

“Will you be my date at the Burrow tonight?” Ginny asks, suddenly. It’s why she came over, really. Well, that and the fact that either she or Neville end up at one another’s flats most evenings. “You know,” she adds before he can answer, thinking out loud, “it’d really be easier if we just moved in together.”

“My therapist will have a field day if we get any more co-dependent,” Neville says.

“Excuse me while I dodge that subject.” Ginny takes a sip of water. “The Burrow?”

“Can’t tonight, sorry Gin. And it’s no use pressing it.” He holds up a hand to forestall any argument. “I’m working on an article that Luna needs first thing in the morning. I already sent Hermione my grovelling apologies and tickets for a self-help expo in London next month.”

“Well played, Sir.” 

Neville shrugs. Suddenly Ginny thinks of Parkinson, shrugging and eating pasties on Ginny’s couch. She dismisses the thought.

“Can’t you come for an hour or two? How tight can the deadline be, if you had time for a wank?” Ginny asks reasonably.

“That took like ninety seconds.”

“But it’ll be so much easier to pretend I’m having a good time if you’re there, Nev.”

“Aww, love you too,” Neville says. “And I really am sorry I can’t come tonight. But I’m working on another Op-Ed for our next edition. What it’s like to be a veteran now that the dust is really settling—that kind of thing. Luna wants to discuss lingering prejudice, reflect on the reconciliation programme McGonagall brought in—that kind of thing.”

“You sound like her,” Ginny remarks.

“Who?”

“Parkinson,” Ginny says quickly, regretting mentioning it.

“You saw her again!” Neville sounds positively thrilled.

Ginny dodges the approaching questions about feelings and dating and wanking. “Right, fine, important work, I get it.” And she does. Then, to make sure she’s made herself clear, she adds, “I can’t wait to read it, Nev. Honestly.” Ginny knows that it’s this kind of work that got Neville into reporting in the first place. Maybe it’s the kind of work that can’t just be done once, but has to continue.

Neville’s face goes pink. “Thanks. It’ll be in tomorrow’s _Quibbler_. And speaking of newsprint,” Neville says, a mischievous smile tugging at his lips, “did you, uh, read the whole article from this morning’s _Prophet_?”

“Hm?” Ginny says, feigning ignorance. 

“Don’t pull that on me,” Neville scolds. “Did you see that photo of Pansy Parkinson in the stands? Or did you manage to rise above the self-sabotaging impulse to read the rest of the expose on your unethical gambling ring?” Neville is joking, but he actually sounds pissed, and it makes Ginny’s heart warm to know she has people in her life that love her this much.

“You mean the photo of Parkinson practically eating her hand while she was watching me fly?” Ginny gives Neville a smug smile. “Might have seen it.” She gives him one of his own shrugs.

“So, why not ask her to go to the Burrow with you?”

Ginny chokes on her drink. “Excuse me?” she asks croakily.

“You said you needed a date—“

“I believe I asked my _best friend_ to accompany me for solidarity,” Ginny tries, but Neville keeps talking.

“—and thanks to my investigative prowess, I believe you two have seen each other, not once, but twice in the last week—“

“It was only a couple of thank-you pasties!” Ginny insists.

“—plus there’s this morning’s evidence of hand-eating to consider. Pansy loathes Quidditch, you know. Says Harry ruined it for her by proxy through—“ he air quotes with his fingers, “‘Draco Malfoy’s dull anti-Gryffindor rants back at Hogwarts.’” 

Ginny snorts at Neville’s posh accent. “Sounds like Parkinson.”

“Thank you,” Neville says, grinning. “Why would a woman who hates Quidditch attend a match and look devastated when a former school rival makes a dire misplay, d’you suppose?” And Neville actually has the audacity to affect a mock-questioning tone.

Ginny says nothing. Because the answer is too unfathomable. 

But not so unfathomable, apparently, for Neville to let it go unspoken. “For fucks sake, Gin, she likes you!”

*

After debating the possibility that Parkinson _likes_ her over their drinks, Neville gives up, dips a Knut out of his pocket, and flips it into the air.

“Heads,” he says, “you go to the Burrow and hack it dateless. Tails,” he adds, “you muster up that Gryffindor courage we’re all so famous for pretending to have and ask Pansy out.”

“I do not agree to any of this!” Ginny insists, as Neville flips the coin.

He catches it in the air and slaps it down on the back of his hand. He lifts his palm and shows Ginny the result. “Don’t arrive with flowers,” Neville tells her. “Pansy hates them. Name complex, if you ask me.”

Then he shoos Ginny back to her own flat so that he can work. 

“I know you just want me out of here so you can get back to wank-a-thon 2002!” are Ginny’s parting words as she disappears into the flames.

Back at home, Ginny paces. She should be at the Burrow in an hour, ninety minutes at the latest. 

She really, _really_ doesn’t want to face it alone. She needs a buffer from her family’s pity. But she also thinks it’d be pretty brazen to invite Parkinson over to her childhood home for the birthday of a former enemy as a first date.

To say nothing of the emotional baggage, Parkinson was never hesitant to mock her parent’s poverty back at Hogwarts. Ginny doesn’t want to invite that kind of judgement down on her family. On the other hand, she’s only seen Parkinson twice since school, and both times she displayed no shame or snobbery about working an entry-level, go-nowhere job to support herself. Besides, Parkinson will have to be able to hold her own in the lion’s den, as it were, if she and Ginny are going to be a thing.

Ginny pauses and laughs out loud at herself. A thing? Since when did her mind decide that she and Pansy Parkinson were going to be a thing?

_Maybe since she punched a dude, annihilated those two pasties like a champ, and then you wanked to her in the tub,_ her brain supplies, rudely.

“Fine,” Ginny sighs out loud. They say they first sign of madness is talking to yourself. So she really has no choice but to ask Parkinson out. It’s for her own sanity.

Ginny quickly scribbles a note on a scrap piece of parchment and goes to her bedroom window. She opens it, leans out, places two fingers in her mouth, and whistles.

Ginny strides back across her bedroom and starts scrutinising herself in the mirror while she waits for Lilith to arrive. They have an understanding, Ginny and Lilith: Lilith flies free, the bane of all small rodents in South London, but she comes when Ginny whistles. It seems fair enough to both of them. Ginny doesn’t send a lot of owls, usually preferring to arrive unannounced in the hearths of her loved ones.

As Ginny is pulling off her post-practice sweatshirt, she hears the swoop of Lilith’s wings and the scrape of her talons on the windowsill as she lands.

“Up for a delivery, pal?” Ginny asks.

Lilith tilts her head.

“I’ll take that as a yes. You can thank Neville for interrupting your day out,” Ginny informs her. “I don’t have an address, but I need you to take this to Pansy Parkinson.” Lilith hoots in mild reproach, and Ginny doesn’t know whether to hope that Lilith finds her quickly or pray that she returns, message unopened.

*

At 5:15, Ginny’s wardrobe crisis is interrupted by a _whoosh_ in her living room.

“Weasley?”

“Parkinson?”

They yell at the same time. 

“Just a moment!” Ginny calls. “Have a seat. I’ll be right out.”

Ginny looks between the three check shirts—one green and red, one blue and pink, and one red and black—laid out on the bed. 

“I thought you invited me to a ‘chill birthday party thing,’ not a Christmas revelry,” Parkinson remarks, when Ginny steps into her living room wearing the green and red check.

“Go fuck yourself,” Ginny calls in a sing-song voice over her shoulder as she turns on her heel and heads back for the blue and pink. 

“Aww, come on Weasley, I was only kidding! I liked the festive colours! The green looks great with your hair!” 

In her bedroom, Ginny undoes the top three buttons and pulls it off, quickly tugging another on over her bare chest. The fit is loose and comfortable, like all of her button ups, and on work days (that is to say, almost every day), she’s just about desperate to get free of her sports bra. 

“Much cuter,” Parkinson says, when Ginny returns.

“I gotta say, your approval makes me want to change almost as badly as your scathing critique.”

Parkinson shrugs. “Not my fault you’re rocking that soft butch energy.”

Ginny feels her cheeks flush in spite of herself.

“So?” says Parkinson.

“So what?” Ginny asks.

“So are you going to lay out some terms of engagement for my behaviour at your family’s place, or what?”

“Do I need to?” Ginny asks, exchanging the light, joking tone for a serious one. 

“No,” Parkinson says, just as serious. “Sorry, I was just trying to break the tension.”

“It’s fine,” Ginny tells her. “Just be cool. Don’t be a prick.”

“Aye, aye.” Parkinson salutes. 

“We don’t have to stay too long,” Ginny adds. “Couple of hours. I have a game tomorrow.”

“I know,” Pansy remarks.

“Keen follower of the Harpies?” Ginny teases. When Parkinson blushes bright red, it fills Ginny’s chest with an incredibly teenaged, triumphant sort of self-satisfaction. _She likes you_ calls Neville’s voice in her head.

Ginny takes a deep breath and tries to quash the feelings of massive regret flowing up her stomach and into her throat. She walks to the hearth, grabs a pinch of Floo power and casts it into the small flame, gesturing for Parkinson to go first. Ginny follows her in, speaking the address, and they _whoosh_ away, a warm tangle of swirling limbs.

*

“Ginny! Take these plates to the table outside, will you?” Molly says the moment Ginny steps out of the fire.

“Course, mum.” Ginny grabs the hovering stack of plates and nods at Parkinson. “This is Pansy Parkinson, mum. Parkinson, this is my mum, Molly Weasley.”

“Pleased to meet you, dear,” Molly says, still whirling around the kitchen, wand waving this way and that as food and flatware and crockery float around. “You can take these outside with Ginny.” 

A clump of forks, knives and spoons float towards Parkinson, who grabs them and gives Molly a polite, “Of course, Mrs Weasley. And thank you for having me,” as she follows Ginny out of the kitchen into the backyard.

The guest table, as Arthur calls it, is set up and Harry and Ron are fiddling with a couple of overlapping tablecloths. One simply isn’t big enough to cover its length.

“Ginny!” Ron says, dropping his end of the linen to give Ginny a wave.

“Hey-o, brother mine.” Ginny smiles. 

“And you brought—“

“Parkinson?” Harry interrupts, walking over.

Ginny is relieved beyond measure when Harry offers Parkinson a hand, which she shakes cordially before doing the same with Ron.

“Long time,” Ron says, as he releases her hand.

“Yeah,” Parkinson says. “That rash clear up?”

“Foul play,” Ron shakes his head in a gesture of mock gravity.

“You know the rule, Parkinson,” Harry elaborates. “What happens in the eighth-year common room—“

“Stays in the eighth-year common room,” Parkinson finishes. “Yeah, yeah.”

“Excuse me?” Ginny asks. “What’s going on here? Rashes? Vegas rules? You never told me you had insider info on my _brother_,” Ginny accuses.

Parkinson shrugs and Hermione walks out from the kitchen carrying a truly massive bowl of salad.

“Parkinson?” she says, sounding surprised, but not angry. 

“Of all the gin joints in all the world, I know, I know,” Parkinson says. “Here, I got you something. I mean, nothing, really, but—“

Hermione extends a hand as Parkinson pulls something out of her jeans pocket and hits it with a quick _Engorgio_, returning it to its usual size. 

“You shouldn’t have,” Hermione says politely, accepting what is clearly a wrapped wine bottle. “I don’t drink, but I’ll add it to the table. Molly will definitely appreciate it.” 

“Might not want to be so quick to pass that off, Granger,” Parkinson says. “Unwrap it, at least.”

Hermione does, and squeals in delight when the bottle is revealed not to contain wine but instead— “Elderflower infusion! Thank you so much, this is really thoughtful.”

Harry smiles at Parkinson and Ron doesn’t bother even trying to conceal his ’not bad’ face.

“I figured you might still be off the sauce,” Parkinson says simply. 

Hermione laughs. “You remembered.” 

“Hard to forget when you were the only one to have intelligible conversations with during weekend shindigs for a whole year.” Parkinson shrugs. “But you’re welcome. I accept all praise.”

Ginny suddenly feels oddly out of place at her own house, with her own family, for fucks sake. She thought she’d grown out of this feeling. 

“Be sure to tell Weasley what a non-prick I am,” Parkinson stage whispers. “I’m trying to win points.”

_Okay, breathe_ Ginny tells herself. _Be glad everyone is being so chill_. Hermione, Harry, and Ron all laugh and Ginny tries to relax. So Parkinson has—or had—some kind of… rapport with Ginny’s people. This is a good thing. _Yay_ she forces herself to affirm. _Disaster averted_.

“It’d earn you more points if you brought _me_ the snooty sparkling water,” Ginny jokes, mastering her impulse to feel excluded, second string. _Parkinson came here with me_, Ginny reminds herself. _She slugged some arsehole on my behalf. She agreed to go on a date to my bloody parents’ house after seeing me twice. She came to a Quidditch match, probably just to see me fly._ Ginny pauses to reflect on the very compelling evidence her brain is providing, now that she’s got her rational, case-building synapses firing. _I’ve still got it_, she thinks smugly.

“Anyone for a spot of gnome chucking before dinner?” Ginny asks the others. “Most pitiful toss has to do the dishes for mum.”

*

Ginny’s toss is by far the best, well over the hedge at the far side of the yard.

“Impressive,” Parkinson whistles, then tosses her own gnome an admirable length.

“Didn’t know you had it in you, Parkinson,” Harry says, amused.

“Yeah,” Ron adds and tosses his own gnome a paltry distance—not even clearing the yard. “Dammit,” he scolds himself before returning to Parkinson. “Didn’t figure your posh arse for a gnome tosser.”

“It’s the worst kept secret of the aristocracy that all of our ancestral homes are freezing and infested,” Parkinson says. “We pretend it’s part of the charm,” she continues, clapping Hermione on the shoulder when she beats Ron’s throw.

“Been doing some strength training to improve my yoga,” Hermione explains.

*

Dinner is as delicious as ever, and Parkinson has Molly smiling as she tells her she hasn’t eaten that well since Hogwarts.

After the meal, Molly brings out a truly astonishing fruit tower, built up like a layer cake.

“Since you’re off sugar, dear,” Molly says, trying not to grimace as she presents Hermione with the sugar-free birthday dessert.

“Thank you, Mrs Weasley. It looks incredible.”

“When’s your birthday, Parkinson?” George asks. He’d arrived shortly after the table was laid. 

“June,” Parkinson replies.

“Bummer,” George says. “We won’t have a proper cake until the end of next month, I suppose.”

Ginny’s face heats with the implication that Parkinson will be back at the house for more dinners. She looks to her right and is pleased to see that Parkinson is sporting a matching flush on her cheeks. Their eyes meet for a moment before they look away from each other like bashful tweens.

“All done here?” Ron asks the table at large. “I’ll clear up then, shall I?” he offers dutifully, as though he hadn’t lost a bet.

“Thank you, Ron,” Molly says, surprised.

“I’ll help,” Harry says immediately, putting a hand on Ron’s shoulder, where it lingers, before they both get up and start clearing the table.

“If that ain’t love,” George says. Ginny smiles, because his tone is teasing, but equally light and loving. 

Parkinson turns to Ginny and gives her a meaningful look.

“After Hogwarts,” Ginny whispers in response.

“Well,” Parkinson whispers back, words covered by the bustle of people leaving the table and heading for the house. “I feel horrified that my pubescent, internalised homophobia was actually levelled at fellow gays.”

“I thought you already apologised for all of your shit,” Ginny says, taken aback by Parkinson’s sincerity.

“Take it from a bona fide garbage person, Weasley,” Parkinson says, looking down at the table now, “apologising doesn’t make all the guilt go away.”

*

Everyone is settled in the Burrow’s sitting room when the first hints of night appear on the sky outside the windows. In the kitchen, Molly busies herself brewing tea and coffee.

Arthur is sat in his armchair, reading the manual for a television that Ginny’s pretty sure Zenith doesn’t even make anymore. The younger contingent exchange deep thoughts about _I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here!_ and Parkinson strikes up an unexpected alliance with George about how Tara was robbed of her victory (“Her devotion to eccentricity should be rewarded,” George laments while Parkinson nods in agreement).

When they exhaust the fertile ground of pop culture, the conversation begins to shift towards work. “Rotten luck with that catch, Gin,” Harry commiserates, “could happen to anyone.” The rest nod.

“The _Prophet_ was bang out of order,” adds Ron.

“It’s base sexism,” Hermione begins, matter-of-factly. “No one would suggest a man player bungled a game because of a relationship that ended five years ago. I did an extra meditation after I read the article to shake it off—“

“Don’t suppose you have a stereo around here, Weasley?” Parkinson asks, cutting Hermione off, much to Ginny’s relief, before the rest join in and begin offering the solemn condolences they’ve obviously been holding in all evening.

“We left our old CD player here, didn’t we Ron?” Harry asks. Harry, Ron, and Hermione had all stayed at the Burrow after the war, supporting Molly and each other in their grief. Hermione had left first, urged on by her need to rectify the situation with her parents. Harry and Ron found a flat a year later, close to George and Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes. “Accio CD player!” Harry incants, wand aloft.

After a moment it zooms into the room. Parkinson shoots Ginny a raised-eyebrow look as Arthur excitedly plugs it in and runs to his shed to collect a better set of speakers and some wires. With Hermione’s intervention, it’s set up in no time.

“We took our CDs with us when we moved,” Harry says, switching it on. “But it’ll pick up Muggle radio stations.”

“No need,” Parkinson says, collecting her handbag from its spot by the backdoor and rummaging inside for a moment. “I always come prepared.” She lifts two jewel cases out of her bag, one in each hand, and flashes them to the room: “_M!ssundaztood_ or _Fever_?”

The group votes P!nk in first and Ginny chuckles internally that Parkinson’s taste in music has apparently rubbed on of Neville as much as Parkinson has picked up his shrugging. Parkinson hands “_M!ssundaztood_ to George, who pops it into the player and turns it on, not too loudly. For a few minutes, conversation continues—everyone assuring everyone else that work is fine. But when the first song stops and track two begins, Ginny sees Parkinson start to bob her head. “I’d’ve had you pegged as one for Mozart or Prokofiev, Parkinson.” Ginny pushes herself up from her spot on the floor and offers Parkinson her hand. “You keep surprising me.”

“Pft,” Parkinson scoffs. “Give me P!nk any day.” She takes Ginny’s hand and gets up to join her to dance.

“Excellent,” George enthuses. “Are we dancing? You’re hired, Parkinson.” Wandlessly, wordlessly, George has the coffee table up against a wall, and soon all the young’uns are dancing as Molly and Arthur look on, smiling. 

“I’m a hazard to myself!” Ginny, calls out, dancing and laughing.

“Don’t let me get me!” Parkinson responds.

For an hour or so, Ginny dances with Parkinson and her family, nearly forgetting about her Bulgarian catch and her high-stakes game tomorrow. 

After the album ends, Ginny retreats to the kitchen for some water, dragging Parkinson with her. “Dancing is thirsty work.” Ginny hands Parkinson a glassed filled from the tap before filling up another for herself.

Parkinson chugs her water as if in agreement.

“Look,” Ginny says quietly. “I have to head out soon.” _Don’t you even think about blushing now_, she instructs her cheeks. She hasn’t been a blushing violet since she was twelve and fixated on Harry. Now is not the time to regress, especially considering she actually fancies Parkinson and doesn’t just idolise her. “I’d like to invite you home with me, but I have to get up disgustingly early for a game, and it doesn’t seem gallant to toss you out before dawn.”

Parkinson smirks and sets her empty glass down on the counter. She stares at Ginny with intense, dilated pupils while Ginny downs her own glass of water. “You know,” Parkinson says once Ginny’s put her own glass down, “I can see a benefit of dating a nationally famous Quidditch player will be that your game schedule is public knowledge. At least I won’t be spending tonight wondering if you _actually_ have to work early.”

“What happened to ‘Quidditch is terribly dreary’,” Ginny asks.

“Don’t do that accent,” Parkinson admonishes with a shudder. “You sound like my mother. Big turn off.”

“Ew. Noted.”

“And I’ll have you know Weasley—” Parkinson leans close to Ginny, close enough to whisper in her ear. Ginny shivers. “—I don’t give a niffler’s tit about Quidditch, but I’ve been a fan of the leather kit you wear since Hogwarts.”

“You know the rules Ginny.” Ginny and Parkinson startle apart as George walks into the kitchen. “No creaming yourself in the food preparation zone. Mum’s still traumatised from that time she caught Harry and Ron.”

“And that,” Ginny tells Parkinson, “is our cue to boogie.”


	4. The Game

That night, after Parkinson thanks Molly and Arthur for having her and Ginny thanks Parkinson for being her date on such short notice, Ginny lies in bed. She played dozens of matches with the Bath Buns, and whenever they got to playoffs, she always found it hard to sleep the night before a game. Running drills in her mind and quizzing herself on defensive tactics for any eventuality would keep her up into the wee hours. Tonight is no different, except thinking about the feel of Parkinson’s breath on her ear is added to the mix. Horny and stressed, Ginny finally decides the only answer is to wank herself into unconsciousness. 

Sex is like sports, she reasons: she always visualises the flying formations she anticipates needing for a Quidditch game. Why shouldn’t she fantasise about the kinds of shenanigans she and Parkinson might get up to first chance they get?

*

Ginny wakes up to her alarm buzzing the next morning at 4:30am. When she’s brushing her teeth five minutes later, her backup Muggle alarm clock starts blaring.

By the time she makes it to the kitchen at 4:45, Neville is waiting for her with a bowl of granola and milk already poured.

“What did I do to deserve you, Neville Longbottom?” 

“Something good, I expect,” Neville says as Ginny picks up the bowl and starts spooning the complex carbs into her mouth, still standing.

Ginny presses a milky kiss to his cheek. 

“So?” Neville asks.

“So what?” 

“So are you going to tell me how things went with Pansy? Or shall I just assume from your general air of good cheer that the date was good?”

“Hardly a date,” Ginny says, dismissively. 

“What would you call it then?” 

Ginny shovels another spoonful of breakfast into her mouth to give herself time to think.

“That’s what I thought.” Neville’s tone is triumphant. “Oh!” he squeaks, slapping a hand over his mouth. “Should I keep my voice down? Is she still sleeping?”

“Yeah right,” Ginny says. “In case you’d forgotten, I have the biggest game of my career today.”

As if on cue, the _Prophet_’s morning delivery owl raps on Ginny’s window. Neville goes to pay for the paper.

“We’re not reading that now,” Neville says, coming back empty handed. “How are you feeling?” 

“The hell we aren’t,” Ginny says, stomping into her bedroom, where Neville’d left the scathing article, complete with details of the astronomical odds bookies were giving people on a Harpies win with Snow out of the game.

For half an hour, Neville listens and offers words of comfort as Ginny vomits up all of her nerves about the upcoming match, and, nearly, her breakfast as well. The arrival of the paper had broken the spell Parkinson cast the night before. In the cold light (well, pre-light) of day, Ginny can’t avoid thinking about the match, now only twelve hours away.

She wishes she could just wank herself to sleep again.

When there’s no time left for ranting, Neville sees Ginny off to morning practice, promising to be at the match cheering her on with the others. He parts with an encouraging hug and a sly smile.

As usual, Ginny’s first into the locker room . As soon as her teammates begin arriving, the tensions rise to a palpable level, and Ginny seriously thinks she might be sick. There’s no room for error today, no buffer thanks to Snow anymore. She, Ginny, blew that last match and today she must—she _must_—make up for it.

After running formation drills and giving Ginny some practice with the Snitch, the coaches send all the players home to relax for a couple of hours before the game begins that afternoon. “Try to get some sleep, or at least some rest before the game,” the Seeking coach advises Ginny, who can’t help but roll her eyes at the suggestion. Ginny is too wired to sit down, let alone sleep.

Ginny’s blaring the Muggle radio and subjecting the grout in her en-suite bathroom to the full force of her fury by means of a violent, Muggle scouring when a voice—not Neville’s, she registers—calls over the music, “Weasley? Are you here?” 

Ginny jumps off the floor and looks in her bathroom mirror at a dismal sight. She’s sweating for England, her hair is held back by a sloppily tied bandana, and she’s wearing a tank top and boxer shorts.

“Weasley?” Parkinson shouts again.

“I’m here!” Ginny answers. “I’m cleaning my bathroom!”

“Can I come in?” Parkinson’s voice is closer now, outside Ginny’s bedroom door, two rooms away from Ginny, sweaty in her underwear.

“Uh— I—“ Ginny splutters unsuavely.

“I can go,” Parkinson says, sounding a bit disappointed. “Just wanted to… Never mind. Owl me later, alright?”

Ginny hears Parkinson’s feet tracking through her flat, back through the living area towards her hearth.

“Wait!” Ginny bursts first through the bathroom, then the bedroom door and Parkinson turns back towards her, taking in the slovenly sight of Ginny.

“Oh.” Parkinson doesn’t bother to suppress an appreciative smirk. 

“_Quietus_,” Ginny says, and the volume turns down on Kiley Minogue. “I was scrubbing,” she explains. “It got hot.”

“Right,” Parkinson says, walking towards her. “You’re all flushed,” Parkinson observes, as if Ginny doesn’t know. Ginny can’t think of anything to say to that aside from reprimanding Parkinson for stating the obvious. But Ginny doesn’t want to take out her frustration on Parkinson, so she says nothing.

“I saw this morning’s _Prophet_,” Parkinson says, filling the silence, walking over to Ginny’s table and snatching it up furiously.

“Yeah?” Ginny’s temper flares. “You and everyone else.”

“What a load of hot rubbish,” Parkinson says, casting the paper back on the table with vigour.

Ginny tries not to laugh—it feels like a betrayal of her rage—but she can’t help it. She laughs and nods in agreement. “Glad I’m not the only one that thinks so.”

“Look Weasley,” Parkinson fwumps down into one of the chairs at Ginny’s kitchen table, “I’m going to tell you something, as someone who at fourteen got a kick out of making up guff about people and getting it published. Whoever wrote this is a hack, probably a jealous, bitter loser who has no accomplishments of their own. And as for any fair weather fans,” Parkinson waves her hand dismissively. “I’d like to see any of them generate a bidding war from opposing teams or catch the Snitch during their first Premier League game.”

“I should hire you to do my PR, Parkinson,” Ginny jokes, deflecting the praise.

“I don’t know, Weasley,” Parkinson says, standing back up and walking over to Ginny. “Sounds like a conflict of interest to me, dating your PR agent.” 

Ginny takes a step towards Parkinson, who side-steps her and swats her lightly on the bare arm with the offending paper. “Due back at the pitch soon, aren’t you?” Parkinson makes a show of looking at the clock on Ginny’s wall. “Almost four o’clock, and I hear you like to get there early.”

“Bought my special issue of _Witch Broomstick_ last year, did you?” Ginny teases.

“Oh Weasley, get with the programme,” Parkinson says, striding over to Ginny’s fireplace and taking a pinch of Floo powder from the ceramic dish on the mantelpiece. “I have an annual subscription.” She disappears into the flames, leaving Ginny alone and aroused.

*

True to form, Ginny is back at the pitch before four to warm up and get the pre-match pep talk from Gwenog, who always gives a rousing speech and a word of encouragement to each of the players in turn. It’s no wonder she’s been captain for over a decade—Gwenog’s generosity and team spirit are unrivalled. But Ginny can’t pay attention to what Gwenog is telling her; honestly, she’s emotionally maxed out. Her romantic and professional lives have each been on separate but equally jarring rollercoasters the last week. In point of fact, Ginny feels like she’s had more life happen to her in the last few days than she has since signing with the Harpies.

She’s spent so long playing second string: hand-me-down everything as a kid; outside the Harry-Ron-Hermione inner circle at Hogwarts; Harry’s substitute Weasley before he came out (not that she holds it against him—she knows how rough coming out is, and it’s not as though she was fully emotionally invested in their relationship either by the time it happened); Order of Merlin, _2nd _ Class; starting her career in the second-tier and moving to Harpies to sit on the bench, part of the reserve line up. 

Amidst the slew of self-doubt, Parkinson’s words from earlier cut through: _a hack, probably a jealous, bitter loser who has no accomplishments of their own._ Parkinson doesn’t think Ginny’s second best—she’s made that clear. In fact, if Parkinson isn’t full of shit (and Ginny has to admit she’s given Ginny no reason to believe otherwise since they met in Hopper’s office), she’s been into Ginny since Hogwarts. Ginny had enough therapy after the war (to say nothing of receiving Hermione’s self-actualisation insights second hand) to know that she doesn’t need outside validation to affirm her worth. Still, she’ll take the reminder. Because, seriously, fuck second string. She doesn’t _need_ Parkinson to fancy her, but flirting with her has shaken Ginny out of her rut, reminded her what she does have, like the worlds’ best friendship with Neville, a family that shows up in force just because she has a bad day at work, and the coveted Burrow gnome throwing record.

“You in there Weasley?” Gwenog asks, giving her a good luck thwack on the shoulder. Ginny looks her in the eye. “You’ve got this. You just watch the Snitch. And the scoreboard,” Gwenog adds, joking with zero bitterness. “We’ve got the rest. We’ll close this together. It’s all of our job to win this game.”

“Here, here!” Marigold raises her bat in agreement, and the rest of the team nod and whoop.

“It’s time!” Hopper calls from outside the inner circle the players have formed.

“Game faces!” Gwenog leads them onto the pitch with a spring in her step.

*

They’ve been in the air less than five minutes when Ginny sees the Snitch the first time. Her heart flies into her mouth as she flies flat out towards it, but one of Ballyhead’s Beaters sees Ginny tearing down the pitch and hits a Bludger towards her with brutal force. Ginny dodges, and by the time she’s back on her prior course, the Snitch is gone.

“Fuck,” she curses. 

“Next time!” Gwenog bellows at her as she tears past Ginny, hitting the Bludger back from whence it came.

“Arrgh!” comes the sound of the Bludger hitting its mark.

Gwenog loops around, flying back past Ginny, reaching out a hand on her way, which Ginny strikes in a stinging, high-velocity high five.

With the Snitch nowhere in sight, Ginny increases her altitude to try and get a better view of the pitch at large. The Bats’ Seeker is always in her peripheral vision. Ginny knows—_knows_—that she can out-fly Jarvis, but she’s leaving nothing to chance.

Ginny starts doing circular laps of the pitch, recalling her earliest training, back at Hogwarts. She can still hear Angelina telling her, “Stay high, stay out of the way, and stay on your guard. A good Seeker never lets their opponent out of their sight, never gives them the chance to make a sneaky catch.”

Ginny pushes everything else out of her mind. What the papers will write about her if she loses two consecutive matches? No. _Stay high._ Whether she’ll ever get off the bench again when Snow recovers. No. _Stay out of the way._ The look on Parkinson’s face, or fuck it, Neville’s, or her mum’s or dad’s or any of her brothers’ if she fumbles another catch, throws away her shot. No. Stay on your guard. She lets Angelina’s words anchor her in the game. Each time a thought—any thought—tries to intrude on her laser-like focus, she dismisses it.

“Constant vigilance,” she tells herself with conviction, eyes darting back and forth between different points on the pitch, but never leaving Jarvis to his own devices.

It seems to go on for ages, and though Ginny doesn’t let herself get distracted, she can feel the adrenaline of maintaining such an intense level of focus coursing through her.

_Stay on your guard._

Out of the corner of her eye, Ginny sees Jarvis dive. She’s ninety-nine percent sure that he’s feinting, but she’s not going to bet the match on a hunch, even one she’s that certain of. She pursues him towards the ground at brake-neck speed.

By the time they’re closing in on the grass, it’s clear to Ginny and everyone else he’s feinting, and Ginny pulls up just before he does. He accomplished nothing. Sure, he got Ginny to stop scanning the skies, but he lost his own time doing the same. Let him dick around. Ginny’s here to win.

Ginny accelerates back into the air, dodging Bludgers and doing her best to stay out of her teammates’ way as they zoom up and down the pitch, trying to keep play away from their goals.

Ginny is swerving left to give Skinner a clear path to the visitors’ goalposts when she sees it. The tiniest flicker of gold—the Snitch, catching the sunlight dozens and dozens of meters above play. With a powerful kick backwards that Ginny knows she’ll feel in the morning, she launches herself towards it, casting a backwards glance at the scoreboard as she does. The Bats have one hundred and twenty points to the Holyhead’s seventy. No worries. Ginny turns back towards the Snitch and urges her broom faster still. But the tiny ball knows it’s pursued, and begins to move higher still. As she gains on it, Ginny hears flapping behind her—Jarvis’s uniform; it has to be.

“Oi! Weasley!” he calls out to Ginny’s back. “I’d keep the eye on the scoreboard if I were you, love. Your Chasers are no match—“

But Ginny pays him no mind; she tunes him out. Sure, she used to let the shitty Slytherin contingent get to her back at school, but that was then. She’s older and a hell of a lot smarter now. She doesn’t turn around, doesn’t fire back a zinger. Instead, she digs deep and finds yet more speed, shooting upwards and past the Snitch.

Ginny can hear Jarvis guffawing at her.

“It’s like you’re not even trying, rookie—“

But he shuts up when Ginny dives back down immediately, heading back towards earth and the Snitch, but from this angle with the scoreboard in view.

“What?!“ Jarvis cries as Ginny pelts towards him, back towards the Snitch. He stalls in the air, shocked, but Ginny doesn’t falter. She catches the Snitch a split second before dodging him where he’s stock still in the air.

“I make that 220 to 120, Harpies,” Ginny calls over her shoulder with all the sass as she can muster, as she flies to join her whooping teammates in a mid-air group hug.

*

When Ginny’s back on the ground, she’s dogpiled by her teammates, along with the coaches. Even Hopper throws herself into the heap of bodies.

“You did it!”

“We won!” 

“The finals!” 

Everyone is shrieking, crying, hugging whomever is next to them before letting go and hugging someone else. Gwenog has jumped onto Marigold, and is straddling her waist while a beaming, joy-sobbing Marigold supports her with apparent ease with one hip and one arm. Ginny is eyeing up Marigold’s free hip when she sees something truly magnificent. Neville, Parkinson, Hermione, Harry, Ron, George, and her fucking parents are cascading down the stands from the friends and family box at the top. Ginny doesn’t even pause to consider how Parkinson got up there. She remembers Nev’s sly smile this morning and reminds herself to send Neville a gift basket of top shelf lubes for his next wank-a-thon. Or perhaps a cheese platter. Or a rare plant! 

Parkinson is the first to vault the barrier at the bottom of the stands—the ten Galleon tickets on ground level. She pounces on Ginny at speed, knocking them both to the ground. Ginny can see the flashes of cameras snapping photos and hear the sounds of her teammates ‘oooh’ing and making smoochey noises in the background as Parkinson moves her lips once more to Ginny’s ear, obscuring both of their faces to the outside world with a curtain of sleek, black hair. “Weasley,” Parkinson yells in her ear over the hubbub. “I’m going to kiss you now. Nod if you’re amenable.” Ginny nods her head for all she’s worth, and Parkinson presses her mouth to Ginny’s, sneaking the tip of her tongue past Ginny’s lips to give Ginny’s tongue the coyest of licks before moving again to yell into Ginny’s ear. “We’ll finish this later. Your family want to celebrate now! You made the final!” Parkinson looks over the moon about it, and Ginny beams up at her as Parkinson dismounts Ginny’s waist and extends a hand to help pull her up off the grass.

_Fuck it_, Ginny thinks. _Neville can have the lube, the cheese, _and_ the plant._


End file.
